10 Jan., 1918.] Farming in England in Early Times. 25 



FARMING m ENGLAND IN EARLY TIMES. 



By Professor Walter J. Harte, University College, Exeter. 



This article, reprinted from the Journal of the British Dairy Farmers* 

 Association, Vol. XXIX., 1915, shows in an interesting way the manner 

 in which our forefathers held their land and cultivated it. That it was 

 satisfactory the history of the times shows, for was not England known 

 as " Merrie England," and did not "every rood of ground maintain its 

 man " ? To those of our English pioneers who chance to read this article 

 and come from farming families many of the terms used and explained 

 will, perhaps, be known. To such readers the article should prove 

 instructive. It is also interesting to know how our ancestors lived and 

 worked. — [Editor.] 



Those engaged in trying to elucidate what is called History are 

 sometimes expected to show an omniscience which is not demanded of 

 other searchers after Truth ; for there is a history of 



" shoes and ships and sealing-wax, 

 of cabbages and kings," 



to mention only a feAV of the subjects of my all-embracing department. 

 So, when your Committee honoured me with an invitation to read a 

 paper to you, I at once had to disclose some of my limitations, and to 

 confess that I had very little in my stock that was likely to be suitable 

 for this meeting. When my offer of "Farming in England in Early 

 Times " was accepted, I realized that my ideas about the words " farm " 

 and " dairy " were very vague, and, of course. I went to consult Sir 

 James Murray's New English Dictionary. There I found that no 

 satisfactory Teutonic etymology was known for the word " farm," but 

 that it was possibly a late form of the Latin word " firma," which 

 signified a fixed yearly payment, and then a lease, and then a tract of 

 land held on lease for the purpose of cultivation, and from that the 

 name was applied without respect to the nature of the tenure. As for 

 " dairy " it is derived from " dey," which is Middle English for a female 

 servant, and dairy is a place where the function of the dey is performed. 

 Then it means the room or building in which milk and cream are kept 

 and made into butter and cheese, and, lastlv, that department of 

 farming concerned with the production of milk, butter, and cheese. 

 This did not give me much assurance that the pa|per which your Com- 

 mittee had accepted from me would be to the point at a meeting of 

 British Dairy Farmers, for there is not much in it about milk and 

 butter and cheese. However, I was cheered by the thought that under 

 modem conditions the production of one set of commodities involves 

 the subsidiary production of a great many other by-products, and my 

 optimism was strengthened when at the Eastgate I gazed into the 

 windows of that distributing centre with the ecclesiastical name and 

 saw displayed there an array of commodities which certainly did not 

 come from milk ; and the sight caused me to hope that my contribution 

 would not be too wide of the mark, unless, indeed, the Cathedral Dairy 

 has a special dispensation or some benefit of clergy which is at present 

 unknown to history. 



The Norman conquerors found England divided up into self- 

 supporting villages, which soon came to be known as manors. For 

 the pur,poses of our story we need not go into the consideration of the 



